


Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you

by BeautifulLife



Series: Kings and Queens [3]
Category: The Selection Series - Kiera Cass
Genre: Bisexual Male Character, Dark, F/M, M/M, Not Fluff, Political Alliances, Political Expediency, Prequel, Subtext
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-28
Updated: 2019-09-28
Packaged: 2020-10-30 03:30:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20807813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeautifulLife/pseuds/BeautifulLife
Summary: Abby Tamblin perches on the arm of a chair: legs crossed, one hand holding a cocktail, head thrown back in laughter, sleek high-heeled shoes dangling from her delicate arched feet.Tamblin Tangerine is the best selling lipstick color in Illéa.Prince Justin can’t decide if he loves or hates her.





	Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you

**Author's Note:**

> Characters refer to the dark political and economic situation that Prince Justin's Selection is meant to distract from. If you've read the Selection series and remember how the lives of these "historic" characters turned out, the subtext is pretty dark, too. In short, not wedding fluff.
> 
> The title is from Shakespeare's Sonnet 57.

Abby Tamblin perches on the arm of a chair: legs crossed, one hand holding a cocktail, head thrown back in laughter, sleek high-heeled shoes dangling from her delicate arched feet.

Tamblin Tangerine is the best selling lipstick color in Illéa.

Abby’s always the girl you’ll find laughing at a joke. She’s first to pull friends onto the dance floor, first to jump into the pool or onto a horse, first to compliment a rival’s dress. On those days when the whole Selection process is soul-sucking, Abby’s the pal who can obtain a stiff drink at ten in the morning, without getting _that look_ from the servants.

Prince Justin can’t decide if he loves or hates her.

/<3/<3\<3\

“Love?” Queen Grace stirs milk into her tea until it’s the color of old muslin. “Love is not the point of the Selection.”

The glance she shoots blonde Lady Schreave is indecipherable to Justin, even though he’s nabbed the basket chair on the terrace where the sun is behind him.

In her early forties, his mother the Queen has skin like flawless umber satin, creased in a single line above her nose from her habit of crooking her left brow. She’s managed to gather three spaniels around her feet without showing a speck of dog hair on her plaid pants, as wide as skirts, that look like a direct challenge to the little sparkling dresses the Select all wear. Aunt Nicole Schreave’s blue day dress is, of course, so thoroughly in line with conservative court fashion that she might as well wear a T-shirt that says _impeccable taste._ In delicate script, naturally.

“Everyone says I’m supposed to fall in love with one of these girls,” Justin points out, swallowing the feeling that he’s failed yet another lesson in political theory.

Lady Schreave shakes her head infinitesimally. “You could fall in love with one, or six, or none.”

“You could be gay,” the Queen says softly. Justin keeps his expression blank.

“The point is that Illéa falls in love with a princess.” Lady Schreave’s gestures are even more precise and delicate than his mother’s. _The Eight who became a One._ That will always be his aunt's claim to fame.

“My dear Nicole, your aunt—we did not become friends until you and your cousin Porter were born. The Selection was supposed to be an easy win for me, and then here is a world-class strategist and mistress of tactics.”

Justin bows to Lady Schreave. “Uncle Brenton was lucky you agreed to marry him.” These polite court conversations go nowhere unless you have the code book—which he never does—but you don’t push at the women who have run Illéa since he was twelve. One false move from Queen Grace, Lady Schreave, or Lord Brenton Schreave, and Grandpa Gregory would come out of retirement, taking the crown from a King who has to be propped like a puppet for his four-times-a-year public appearances—

/<3/<3\<3\

King Damon, writing in his private chambers, looks almost normal, if his body servant has managed to comb his graying dark hair and spread make-up on his swelling red nose. The fading carpets, brought by some magnate of the Chinese occupation years… the polished furniture with its sinuous curves and velvet upholstery… the cabinets of books, some with faded and failing spines, others still in the bright dust jackets of the pre-war years… the document box with its crown seal and gold handles, propped open on the desk to show a careless stack of papers and flimsies… it is the same royal study that Justin remembers visiting as a child.

Pay no attention to the bars on the windows, or how every servant has the scars of Eight street thugs and looks too burly for his uniform, or how the letters in the document box are the ravings of partisans who believe King Damon is being held hostage in a power grab by his cousin Brenton Schreave.

The letter writers are arrested, of course. What Justin’s father is writing, eight hours a day at his desk, are his memoirs. Those are taken away each night and burned without reading. King Damon never asks to revise or edit old drafts.

Justin visits because this is his father, and this is the only other man in Illéa who has been through a Selection.

“How did you know Mother was right for you?” he asks. It’s that long moment of afternoon when the sun is at the wrong angle for Damon’s scribbling, but it’s still too light for lamps.

“No man chooses his mother, boy. Mine was dead before the Selection, anyway. Killed herself after Kitty was married and Spencer did a bunk.”

These were the kinds of rumors that showed up in Damon’s correspondence—the ravings of his disease, but how all his letter-writers had it, too, baffled Justin. Crown Prince Spencer died saving a baby from a fire. Queen Bethany drank milk after eating a bowl of cherries and died of a stomach ailment. This was a matter of record, right there in the news.

“Grace Lowell, I mean. How did you choose Grace Lowell out of all the young women?”

Damon chuckled. “She was the last one I fucked.”

Justin doesn’t want the images that flash across his brain but forces himself to ask the question. “And it felt right?”

“It felt like fucking. I was out of time. The organist was tuning up the wedding march. What the hell was I going to do? It made my father happy.”

A soft throat-clearing draws his attention to the servant lurking by the bed-chamber door. This one has a knife scar from the corner of his mouth to the corner of one startlingly blue eye. “Beg pardon, Your Royal Highness, but His Majesty has audiences to attend to.” _Audiences to attend to_ is code for _he’s crazier than usual today._ “Perhaps another time?”

“Of course, Farley. Thank you.”

/<3/<3\<3\

“A good queen will be a supporter to you in governing,” Gregory Illéa says.

He’s smaller and grayer than he appears in official portraits, and his pale eyes still have the trick of pinning you so the world narrows to his gaze. Justin has found him in his book-lined study, but it could be the Green Parlor or the kitchens or the royal bath for all it matters. Gregory Illéa makes himself center of the universe.

“A support,” Gregory repeats. “Not a substitute king. Your bachelor party will start with your father passing the crown to you.”

This rocks Justin back in his wing chair. “A coronation—”

“Your wedding ceremony will start with the coronation. You will turn to meet your bride as a king. Your father’s abdication will be an announcement only. There’ll be video, but only Twos will have it at first. At midnight, the video will leak so the lower castes can see it. You’ll receive a memo with the whole schedule.”

“Grandfather, I don’t feel ready to be King.”

Gregory Illéa’s gaze sharpens to a stiletto point. “Modesty overdone becomes whining. I don’t believe the nonsense that the person who doesn’t want an office is the most qualified to have it. I wanted to be King. Your mother wanted to be Queen. We’ve each done well for Illéa.”

Justin grasps at the stick thrown to him. “So I should choose a woman who wants to be Queen?”

“They won’t tell you they want it. They’ll cast down their eyes and smile and talk about love. Watch what they do. Your mother and your aunt were as demure as any of them, but they brutally played to win. It was a joy to watch.”

/<3/<3\<3\

“What’s a wingman for?” Porter Schreave asks with his deep laugh. He’s sprawled on Justin’s bed, hands clasped behind his head, with a book of maps splayed beside his gleaming naked body.

That golden, brilliant Porter should be Justin’s wingman always makes Justin feel like even more of a shadow, but that’s their accident of birth. Justin, who writes poetry and fumbles at politics, will be King. Porter, who loves military history, rides like a centaur, and dances like an angel, will be his wingman and confidante always. They’ve known that since they were four.

Being lovers, they’ve known a much shorter time, but that’s for always, too. Justin’s always the one who springs out of bed, wraps himself in a robe, and busies himself with drinks and wipes and games and reading aloud—because if he did not, he would snuggle into Porter’s broad, golden-flocked chest, inhale the amber and soap and whiskey of Porter’s body, and sob.

“There are only about four that I’m really interested in,” Justin says from the deep chair where he’s setting up an ivory and ebony chess set. Porter will win the game, of course, but winning puts him in a romantic mood.

“Calla Tolliver from Carolina,” Porter guesses. “Mildred Fiennes from Baffin. Tammi Lee-Smythe from Likely, but you can’t marry her. Nobody will accept a queen with Chinese ancestry. That’s all your Twos. Who else?”

“Not Tammi,” Justin says, to postpone the simple request that’s sticking in his throat.

“Snubbing a Two at this phase in the Selection—”

“Fine. Include Tammi in the ones you chat up for me. And Diannah Steele from Waverly. I know she’s a Four, but I like her.”

“My mother started as an Eight.” Porter’s tone has the same flat slap at Gregory Illéa at his most factual.

“I know—”

“Who’s the fourth?”

“Abby Tamblin of Sota. She’s a Three. People like her.”

“Yes.” The lamp light puts a flush on Porter’s cheeks that wasn’t there once the panting of sexual desire had stilled. “Of course. Abby has won the hearts of the nation.”

_I feel something around her._ Justin doesn’t say it. It’s not the same as what he feels with Porter, not the warmth of trust that expands like a sun into desire and release. “When you’re with a woman—”

“It’s like this. And different. I’m not offended if you pick a woman you want to fuck, Jus. I’m going to, when it’s my time to settle down.”

“Is there anyone in the Selection—”

“I don’t want your leftovers.” Porter rolls over to lean on one elbow. The lamplight traces his features—perfect and symmetrical, like a statue except for the quirk at the corner of his mouth. “My mother didn’t love your father. But there’s too much danger that a runner-up would love you.”

/<3/<3\<3\

At the ball that night—there’s a ball once a week, despite the famines and shortages, as Mother believes in keeping up appearances—Porter dances by with Tammi Lee-Smythe and deftly forces Justin to cut in.

Miss Lee-Smythe is small and olive-skinned, with lustrous brown eyes, a dainty snub nose, and straight dark hair that she’s given blonde streaks and swept into curling updo. Her sparkling little dress is pure white, and when she twirls, the different shapes of the beads coalesce into a white-on-white version of the flag of Illéa.

“Thank you for getting me over with,” she says. Her hand is clammy in his.

“It’s always a pleasure to talk with you, Miss Lee-Smythe.”

They circle the room in silence.

“May I be candid, Your Royal Highness?”

“Justin. And yes.”

“My job is to show the people of Illéa that citizens of Chinese origin are loyal to the Crown. Your grandfather would not have given us Two status if he didn’t believe it, but times, as you know, have changed. Suffering people look for someone to blame.”

“So you want to advance to the Elite?” The tightness in Justin’s chest loosens. That’s one spot taken with a woman who’s not a real end-game choice. Nine to go. Only one has to be a queen.

“With due respect, Your Roy—Justin, no. If I’m seen as truly competitive, public opinion will turn against me.”

“You want me to send you home.”

“Not exactly. You’re eliminating several of us at once to reach the Elite?”

“That’s the plan.”

“My ideal plan—you may not like this, but I believe it benefits Illéa most—is that you make me the last addition to the Elite.”

“I thought—” His foot scuffs her satin slippers, but he recovers.

“All the time you’re making the announcement, cast longing glances at a lower-caste girl. Imogen. She’s your last remaining Five. She’s lovely, she’s modest. People will believe that your grandfather is forcing you to eliminate her.”

“How does that—”

“I will weep as I thank you for the honor. Then I will kneel and beg you to send me home and take Imogen instead, as she loves you truly and deserves the chance more than I do.”

“She loves me?” Justin’s conversations with Imogen are, at least soothing. She writes children’s stories in verse, with simple improving morals.

“Who knows? Who cares? The public will eat it up like ice cream, and maybe they will finally turn against the mobs who drag ‘Chink traitors’ behind trucks and set us on fire in alleys.”

“Was someone close to you killed?” Justin asks gently.

Miss Lee-Smythe has the same trick as Lady Schreave—he can’t name the shift in her expression, but her face has somehow gone from innocent expectation to suppressed rage. “‘No man is an island.’”

“The Mercer Island lynching. Was he your friend?” Justin realizes, in an unreadable instant, that he’s botched it. Miss Lee-Smythe is not speaking in court code. She is, literally, quoting John Donne. “I’m sorry. They’re your people, whether they were close to you or not.”

“They’re _people,_ whether they’re close to me or not. I happen to be able to do something to help the ones who look like me. So can you, if you’re willing.”

“But please don’t marry you,” he says, trying to lighten the mood.

“If you did, do you think the masses would let me live long enough to bear an heir?”

/<3/<3\<3\

Late that night, Justin finds Porter at a card table with two more of his candidates, Calla Tolliver and Mildred Fiennes. “Just who we hoped would make a fourth,” Porter says heartily, riffling the cards. The Select giggle so melodically that it forms a chord.

“My pleasure.” The chair left for Justin has its back to the fire, because even the cleverest assassin won’t come down an active chimney. This has the advantage that he can see the Select’s expressions, while they’ll have to squint to read his. No Select ever squints.

Their fluttering of _Your Royal Highness_ and _such an honor_ and _now we’ll lose our allowances, we’ll be so outplayed_ fades into simpers when Porter offers to flip a coin for who will partner which young woman. Miss Tolliver and Miss Fiennes exchange a glance, then Miss Fiennes offers to play boys against girls.

As Porter deals the cards, Justin resists the urge to watch his cousin’s long, capable fingers—how capable, and of what, he’s already enjoyed this afternoon, and if Porter cheats in the dealing, he’d rather not know. His attention should be on his Select.

Miss Fiennes of Baffin, the granddaughter of a naval hero of the war, is tall even sitting down, with a rawboned build that makes her shimmering blue-purple waterfall of a dress feel captured from some remote Atlantic rock. The jeweled narwhal pin she always wears is in her red hair tonight, while the necklace at her throat is a new piece, a gold compass.

Miss Tolliver of Carolina, the granddaughter of a tobacco magnate, is Miss Fiennes’ opposite in every way: small, plump, peaches-and-cream in complexion to Miss Fiennes’ freckled ivory, dark-eyed to Miss Fiennes’ green, her voice a lilting drawl in contrast to Miss Fiennes’ nasal twang. Her honey-brown hair has the sheen Justin recognizes from his mother’s coiffures: Miss Tolliver’ sleek, complicated updo starts the day as a mass of nappy curls. Her dress is a leafy green with spangles.

“Which of you wants to be Queen?” he asks.

Their expressions are, for a second, identical. Not shock, not distress—their flirtatious smiles don’t shift, but freeze like masks. “It would be arrogant to think ourselves worthy,” Miss Fiennes says.

“We trust your heart to guide you,” Miss Tolliver contributes, dimpling.

Porter chuckles. “He asked me to tell you what his grandfather said. He knows you know.”

Their faces are Lady Schreave all over again: Justin can’t find one quirk of an eyebrow or flare of a nostril or even quickening of breath, but at least eight moods shift too fast to identify. “How are you trained to be Queen?”

“We’re not,” Miss Tolliver says quickly. “Nobody would ever think it.”

“Staking our provinces’ futures on one year’s luck would be foolish,” Miss Fiennes continues. “As Twos, we’re trained to serve. To lead, if necessary.”

“Not that we’re not grateful to be here. If Your Royal Highness deigned to fall in love with one of us, it would be the greatest honor in the world—”

“Calla.”

“Mildred. You catch more flies with honey than with… with salt cod.”

“Salt cod will get you through a hard winter.” There’s another of those imperceptible shifts as Mildred directs her sea-green gaze at him. “Your Royal Highness, Illéa desperately needs a shift in agricultural policies. Grain is rotting in silos in places like Sota and Kent, while my people survive on salt cod and Calla’s—”

“Heroically work their kitchen gardens for vegetables. It makes great news videos, the Sevens coming home from a long day in the fields to work their patches of tomatoes and squash.”

Miss Tolliver frowns at her hand of cards, then plays an eight of spades.

“I’m not understanding something,” Justin says. Porter grins.

“Tell them about your grandfather’s plan,” Miss Fiennes says to Miss Tolliver.

“My grandfather wants to diversify into cash crops. But the government subsidizes tobacco, same as the Chinese occupation did. Hardly anyone under fifty smokes any more, no matter how cheap tobacco is. It’s a… oh, I hate the word. You know what they call them. We’ve got warehouses of tobacco that we have to let go to waste or export to China, because that makes us rich.”

“How rich do you need to be?” Justin asks.

“Rich enough to be a Two,” Miss Tolliver says lightly. The tension around the table is so tight that it pushes Justin’s breath back into his chest.

Miss Fiennes sweeps the round’s winnings into her pile and shuffles the cards. “Calla is one of your older Select, did you know?”

“Positively ancient. I’d be ready to wear black and grow a mustache without the Selection.”

Porter’s grin widens. “What the ladies are hinting is that Miss Tolliver was working on her doctorate in economics before the Selection swept her off to Angeles.”

“She can give you all the spreadsheets on how incentives and subsidies need to be different, for her family’s firm to go back to growing crops other than tobacco,” Miss Fiennes explains. “It’s quite dull, but thorough. I felt thoroughly schooled, coming here with just a plea for a more sensible shipping network and less speculation in wheat futures.”

“I’d be honored to read your work, Miss Tolliver,” Justin says. “And to share it with the government’s economists, who’ll understand it better than I do.”

“Thank you, Your Royal Highness. I’d be honored to be instructed by superior minds as to where my errors are.” She dimples as she says it, but Justin understands he’s put a foot very wrong.

“You’ve piqued my curiosity, too,” Porter says. “My grasp of economics is rudimentary, though, not like my cousin’s.” That’s a lie, sharpened to a nudge that Justin needs to sit up and pay attention.

“It might be best if Miss Tolliver explained her work to Porter and me.” The tension eases marginally. “Then we can discuss a plan for shifting the ministers’ opinions. You’ll be staying as one of the Elite—both of you—and nobody will be surprised at our spending time together.”

The look the Select exchange is, Justin hopes, satisfaction. He wonders, though, if anyone has come here genuinely hoping to marry him.

/<3/<3\<3\

“Marry you, Your Royal Highness? It’s never far from my thoughts.”

Diannah Steele is delivered to Justin’s study directly after breakfast. She’s a bundle of determined energy whose looks he never remembers from one meeting to the next, other than dark, sparkling eyes. Her outfit is a plain gray background for the spirals of her handmade jewelry.

“It’d be rude to ask you if you love me, but—”

“May I, Your Royal Highness?” At his nod, she hops onto his lap. Justin’s stomach shrivels at the instant thought that there’s the poisoned pin concealed somewhere in Miss Steele’s swirls of gems and steel, that this is the start of an assassination attempt—but what she does is place her lips on his.

She smells like jasmine and hot metal. When he kisses her back, she tastes like pancake syrup.

When she’s done, she drops back into her chair and sits with her capable, scarred hands on her knees. The flush is already draining from her cheeks. She isn’t breathing heavily and neither is he.

“What I think about, mostly, is how being Queen would change my life. I _like_ designing jewelry. I understand metal. I feel like it responds to me.”

“You could still have it as a hobby.”

“I’d love it better than my real job. As Queen. Your Royal Highness—”

“Call me Justin. Please. We can’t be formal after kissing.”

“Justin. I’m trying to learn not to be selfish. To put Illéa first. It’s not—it’s not that I’m not patriotic. I just wasn’t raised with the sense of _noblesse oblige_ the Twos have. I’m not born to serve. I’m born to create. I’m willing to work at being a good Queen. Any of us are. I don’t think I’d be a very good one.”

The memory of the kiss expands to fill the space between them with emptiness. It was no more than vaguely pleasant for him, and he doubts it meant more to her. He tries to imagine kissing her again, moving his lips to the notch in her collarbone that she fills with an iridescent gem—and his pulse stays steady. The prospect is not repulsive—but it’s not like when Abby Tamblin arches her back and smiles his direction.

“Do you want to be in the Elite or sent home?” he asks.

“That’s not my decision to make, Your—Justin. I’ll do my best in whatever capacity you think best.” When he doesn’t respond, she adds, with a barely-there smile: “The longer I’m here, the more demand there’ll be for my jewelry designs. I did say I struggle with selfishness.”

/<3/<3\<3\

Porter culls Imogen Storey of Belcourt from a group of the Select headed for the Women’s Room after lunch. Justin is waiting for her in a niche in the portrait gallery.

“Your Royal Highness!” Miss Storey stumbles over the words, blushing as she curtsies. When she’s told to call him _Justin,_ she looks as if she might transform into one of the intelligent mice she writes about.

Justin doesn’t dare ask her directly if she wants to be Queen, so he makes small talk about what she’s planning for her books. The mice are going to visit the palace, of course—that’s inevitable—and when she describes their antics in the Green Parlor and on the grand staircase, he smiles, then laughs. Her gray eyes light up, her cheeks turn pink—even her pale brown hair seems to shimmer and crinkle in joy.

“Do you know you’re beautiful?” he asks suddenly.

Miss Storey’s blush deepens as she thinks about it. “Yes.”

“Just yes?”

“All the Select clean up nicely. It’s not a coincidence—not an accident that we have to submit photos. You want a healthy mother for heirs, of course, and regular features sort of predict that, at least people think so. You want someone who looks good on camera—I mean, she has to attract you, too.” She looks down at her hands, rustling in the lap of pants that copy his mother’s latest fashion. “I’m babbling, aren’t I?”

“I’m listening, aren’t I?”

She takes a deep breath and smiles into his eyes. “If I’m here, I must be beautiful. There’s no point in false modesty about it. It’s a thing I can be proud of. Not as useful or lasting as what I write, of course, but it’s sweet to have a moment of being thought beautiful. I’m lucky.”

He considers kissing her, but asking for something that she has to allow seems like the wrong way to evoke honesty.

“How do you feel about being Queen?”

“It would be an extraordinary honor for a Five. For anyone, of course. But coming from being a Five! I’m terrified that people will ask me about politics on camera. I’ve paid attention at all the lessons, but I write stories about talking mice. What do they learn at the end of each book?”

“To be nice to each other?” It’s a relief to be in a conversation where Justin’s fairly sure he’s not missing any subtext.

“Exactly! To be kind. To be respectful. To listen. That’s all my mouse society really needs. I’d take that into being Queen, of course, that’s if I were honored with your choice, and I’d hope it’s enough. But I’m not sure. I’m sure about being beautiful because I’m with beautiful people. I can tell, though, that I don’t have the same training and talents as the Twos. There’s no way I could.”

“You’d grow into it.” Justin makes his voice gentle. Playing lover to this young woman, to make the swap Tammi Lee-Smythe is set on, wouldn’t be difficult. A little corner of his soul despises himself for that.

/<3/<3\<3\

Justin also despises himself for the stab of jealousy he feels when he finds Porter with Abby Tamblin in the stables. They’re laughing together as they unsaddle their horses—he’d watched them galloping across the Lower Meadow, moving like one single wave of horse and human—and he wants, with lust so strong it feels like rage, to take Porter away from her, to slam his cousin against the wall of an empty stall and kiss him until they fall moaning to the newly fresh straw.

Instead, he leans against the door frame and waits for them to look across the ruckus of stable hands and notice him.

Abby is the first to see him, and to her credit, her eyes and smile widen. “Justin! You can tell your cousin—” A gloved hand flies to her mouth. “I’m so sorry, Your Royal Highness.”

“Please. Call me Justin.”

“Justin.” Her strawberry blonde curls bounce as she picks up a brush. “Your cousin was showing me your father’s memoirs this morning. I told him that, speaking as a nurse, some of his stories weren’t anatomically possible.”

_But those are burned each night._ Justin holds perfectly still. He can’t—

“Anyway, what I wanted to know is, is it really true that King Damon took to bed every girl in his Selection except the Queen and Lady Schreave?”

“I don’t know.” His voice sticks in his throat. “It’s not the sort of thing you ask your father.”

“Oh goodness, I’ve been tactless. In medicine, we lose some inhibitions—”

“Leave the horses to the stable hands and come for a walk with me,” he says as if Porter isn’t there, raising an eyebrow at Justin’s tone making it an order.

Abby Tamblin is an easy woman to walk with. She’s athletic enough to match his stride if he reins in his simmering rage. It’s not her fault that Porter told her things that ought to be secret.

She’s also tactfully silent as they cross the stable yard and take the turn for the path through the garden. She smiles with her usual sunshine as they pass two of the Select—Miss Cane and Miss Dominguez—picking daisies, but she doesn’t fuss or treat anyone but Justin as the center of her attention.

“Do you enjoy being a nurse?” Justin asks because he’s the Prince, and he should be putting Miss Tamblin at ease rather than controlling the urge to do… something to her.

“No.” She peels off her riding gloves at a pace that allows for reflection. “Not since the night I held down a fourteen-year-old boy while my parents amputated his leg without anesthesia. It was his left leg, not that that matters to anyone but him.”

“I’m sorry.”

“My parents run a clinic for Sixes, Sevens, and Eights. That’s in my bio. I was serving spaghetti to the girls who come to us for flu shots and abortions, the night of the Selection. Some of them had nowhere else to watch. Even if they’re missing teeth and toes and… everything, they all hope they’ll be the one chosen to represent Sota.”

He guides her into a seat under a rose arbor. The bench is narrow enough that her sweat, the smell of horses, and the grassy perfume she wears blends intoxicatingly with the flowers. Her blouse is unbuttoned at the collar, with not even a narrow chain tracing a line across her pale, freckled skin.

“So you know about service.”

She sighs and looks sideways at him, hazel eyes shadowed under dark, thick lashes. “To be honest, I was swallowing resentment the entire night. Even when my name was announced, it wasn’t about _me_. Not for more than 10 seconds that went by too fast for me to capture. But I sound like a total bitch.”

“You sound human.” His hand settles lightly on the padded knee of her riding pants. “Go on.”

“I went from serving spaghetti to the starving to being the pride and hope of Sota. Just like that. I didn’t have a minute to be Abby Tamblin, Select. My joy, my surprise—everything, was the property of other people.”

“I know.” He closes his lips tightly on the words bursting to get out, until she looks at him with distress in her eyes that turns his resolve to smoldering ashes. “Do you know what the first picture of me is? You do, because it was broadcast across Illéa. _A prince is born._ People voted on what color my first going-out outfit should be. I never wore that shade of blue again because Mother vetoed it, said it looked bad on TV.”

“There’s a doll in my bedroom, back home, still wearing my baby dress in Prince Blue.”

“My education, my friends, my free time—everything for my entire twenty years of life has been the property of Illéa. And now so is my choice of a wife.”

“I’m not sorry about that last part. I can’t be.” Abby Tamblin’s smile is soft and sweet. When he leans in, she murmurs _yes._ Her lips part beneath his, slowly, letting his tongue through first. Hers is deft and swift, stimulating the moan that gathers in his throat.

“Kings have to have secrets,” he says into the breathlessness following that kiss. “Even from the people closest to them.” _I can’t tell her about Porter. Not yet. A nurse might understand—but sharing her husband, it’s too much to ask._ “We could have secrets together, too. It’s something.”

“Lock the bedroom door and just be Abby and Justin?” Her voice is a brush of butterfly wings.

“Lock any door. The bedroom’s a good start.”

She leans her head on his shoulder, and he rests his cheek against her springy curls. “It’s a risk,” she points out. “You might not like me when it’s just Abby and Justin.”

“If a King can’t handle risk, he doesn’t deserve to be King.” He clasps her bare hand, running a finger around the spot where he intends to put a ring. “After I announce the Elite in this week’s broadcast—”

Her head jerks up. “This week?”

“Are you hinting I haven’t taken long enough?” That gets a laugh from her. “I have to take a few weeks—say, three, four at the outside—to pretend I’m taking the process seriously. Can you keep a secret that long?”

“That depends on the secret.” She tilts her head to kiss the corner of his jaw, and he feels the same surge of lust that he felt for Porter in the stables.

“That you’re going to be Queen of Illéa. Queen Abby the Beloved in the throne room. My trusted adviser on public health in the council chamber. And in private—”

“Abby. Just Abby. Yes.”


End file.
